Steel Toe Studios

Taking trade skills into new arenas can be a dangerous proposition -- while Frank Lloyd Wright used his architectural genius to design great office furniture, former MLB pitcher Mark Littell used his experience to create the Nutty Buddy super-cup, and now gets whacked in the balls by a pitching machine for a living. Finding success bringing blacksmithery to belting, Steel Toe Studios.

Offering 44 different handmade steel/pewter buckles to latch onto six belt options, Pacific Northwest-based STS is the offspring of a lone lady blacksmith who wanted to apply her unique skills to a new medium, but was forced to cross singing off the list by the copyrighteous Ladysmith Black. Hand-forged steel rings loom big, available filled with perforated steel to resemble a manhole cover, interlocked as in a Venn Diagram, and even stacked slightly askew in sets of either three or five; for action with angles, you can get what looks like a gear cog atop a square plate w/ a hollowed-out center, a forged rectangular slab with shinier fabricated steel laid on top in the pattern of a tire tread, placing one thing that's completely dangerous when bald on top of another. More detailed outliers include a cast pewter job with a pile of seashells, 23 differently sized, barely touching circles made from forged steel but available w/ brass plating, and a steel oval that serves as a mount for what looks like a lion's head door knocker, though if the pants're a rockin...

Once you've picked a buckle, STS's DIY engine lets you see how it'll look on any of the six hand-dyed leather belts (running from standard brown or black to more adventurous ochre or oxblood) or their recycled rubber model -- coincidentally, an appropriate description of what you can now find under Mark Littell's Buddy.